What does the Coronavirus sound like? The question may sound absurd, but that’s what some researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the most authoritative universities overseas, have asked themselves. The team is involved in the study of Covid-19 and decided to analyze the virus from an unusual point of view. The musical one. For each amino acid that makes up the structure of the Coronavirus, the researchers assigned a musical note. The score thus obtained was subsequently performed with flutes and stringed instruments. The result is “Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein”, a real symphony that “translates” the molecular structure of the Coronavirus into sounds. The MIT research has been published in ScienceMAG and has aroused great curiosity within the international scientific community.
Coronavirus: MIT researchers reconstruct the sound of the virus
According to the authors of the research, this “music” could help in the study of the structure of the Coronavirus and in the identification of possible “weak points” to attack with drugs and immune therapies. The music format could help scientists find sites on the protein where antibodies or drugs may be able to bind simply by looking for specific music sequences that match these sites. This unconventional method, the researchers say, “is faster and more intuitive than conventional methods used to study proteins, such as molecular modeling. By comparing the musical sequence of the peak protein with a large database of other sonified proteins, it may one day be possible to find one that attaches to the peak, preventing the virus from infecting a cell”. In a global mobilization against the Coronavirus, music is also called upon to play its part.
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